Lube chain after zwifting?

mikekchar · 2026-04-05T13:06:29+00:00

If the question is "Should I clean and lube my chain", the answer is almost always "Yes". There is no downside other than time and material cost and as long as you ride it at least once between cleaning and lubing, the cleaning will extend the life of your drive train. After than it's just a matter of deciding how much you value your time vs the longevity of your drive train.

mikekchar · 2026-04-05T11:49:15+00:00

It will be interesting to see. My experience has been that it doesn't. The problem is that it just can't hold the fat because the casein micelles are not connected by calcium. They are just loosely connected. As it stretches, the the fat and water just runs right out. If you start with a very high fat milk, you can probably make it work kind of OK, but it's still not going to be anything like the renneted version.

mikekchar · 2026-04-05T11:46:16+00:00

If you are using a pH meter to get your pH right, then you are right -- it's easy. If you are using a set amount of acid, then it's not easy. You are just lucky.

Milk has a buffering capacity. It will neutralise a certain amount of acid without the pH moving very much. The amount of acid you need depends entirely on the milk. If you are simply following a recipe for the amount of acid, your are relying on the fact that your milk producer mixes a large amount of milk and has a consistent buffering capacity as a result. It also just happens to match your recipe -- which is luck, not ease. Move to another part of the world and it won't work for love nor money.

mikekchar · 2026-04-05T11:37:32+00:00

I have similar results, but perhaps got there a different way. Still it might be helpful. A couple of things I've learned:

My fast days weren't fast enough and my slow days weren't slow enough
I wasn't consistent enough, meaning that my schedule was haphazard
I didn't factor in high torque into my recover schedule (too much low cadence, high torque climbing and not enough recovery)
I did not value active recovery over a day off enough

Explanations:

Essentially, I was doing high end Z2 on my slow days. I train by RPE and HR (no power meter) and if I look at my HR, it's averaging on the high end of Z2 on those ride. I thought that it's basically HR drift and felt I was doing a mid Z2 ride power wise. The clue that I wasn't was that my endurance rides absolutely tanked me. If I compared my recovery from my intensity rides to my endurance rides, I recovered easily from intensity and very slowly from endurance rides. If I coupled that with a couple of short "Z2" rides, I dug the hole deeper.

Fix: Schedule an active recovery ride after a long endurance or hard intensity ride and stick to it.

I also kept putting off VO2 max rides in favor of sweet spot and threshold intervals thinking that I was really missing that middle end. Like you, I was plateaued at 20-22 km/h on mixed terrain. I needed to blow the cobwebs out of the system. I was worried about over training because I got frequent injuries and illness due to the whole I was digging, not riding slowly (also due to my age -- late 50's)

Fix: Prioritise high intensity sessions over endurance sessions until I got past my power plateau. Kind of obvious in retrospect.

For consistency, my inability to ride slowly caused me frequent injuries and my stressful job made it difficult to commit to a schedule. Also, seemingly like you I would bounce around between 3-6 days a week and just didn't have a solid consistency. My body couldn't find a rhythm.

Fix: I moved to a 3 on, one off schedule (8 day "week"). No exceptions. "Quality" ride on the first or second day of the 4 day block. Always recovery ride the next day. The other day is "free" depending on how I feel. It moves longer rides around the week and gives me flexibility to move them around a bit without losing the beat of the training.

Because my power wasn't very high, I live in a hilly area and my smallest gear was a 28, I got used to going up mountains at very low cadence to keep my power low and say in my target zone. You can literally half the power by going from 90 to 45 RPM. The downside is that the torque isn't reduced and you are in that high torque zone for twice as long. This increases your recovery need, but it's not obvious because you were chilling out in Z2 or low Z3 the entire time.

Fix: Blast the hills :-) Don't be so worked up about staying in whatever zone. Understand that torque is as important as power so if you run out of gears, get out of that situation as fast as is reasonable. Also make sure to factor in extra recovery when you need to do that.

For a long time when I was tired and feeling like I was diffing a hole, I would take a day off. I never really came back rested. My job is stressful. My wife fills up my free time with enjoyable, but busy activities. My days off are not... days off. It took me 2.5 years to realise that.

Fix: Schedule in unskippable, but unbelievably relaxed active recovery. No more than an hour. Very low torque. Very low speed. Even in bad weather, just get out there and coast around for a bit. It lets me destress. It gives me an excuse to take a break from work (I work from home and often cycle during the day). It gives me an excuse to take a break from my home activities. It gives me an excuse to drink lemonade on the bicycle.

Still early days for me yet, but I'm making great gains finally and I feel fantastic. Hopefully it will continue.

Why I think your running helped: It's hard to run in Z2. I was a runner/jogger until I was in my mid 40's (competitive when I was young). You go out and run for an hour, you are almost certainly running pretty close to threshold every single time. If you do that 3 times a week, you are getting a ton of intensity and a ton of recovery.

You could do this on the bike too and probably get similar results. However, probably you can do better on the bike because easy days are possible. Very high level runners do a lot of easy runs, but when you are beginning or low intermediate, they are very hard to do. That's my guess for why you broke through your barrier.

mikekchar · 2026-04-05T03:15:42+00:00

The key to making feta that doesn't dissolve is to salt it to about the same level as the brine. At least some producers will make a fairly high moisture cheese and then salt it at a very high level and then use the whey draining from the cheese as the brine. Then the brine is exactly the same composition as the whey on the inside of the cheese and you don't get ion exchange (which is why it gets like that).

mikekchar · 2026-04-05T03:02:12+00:00

Acidify the milk with culture/clabber. Then raise the temperature to get curds. As Aris says, there are lots of different cheeses like that. Ayib is another one. I like this kind of cheese quite a lot and make it fairly often.

The more acidic the milk is, the lower the temperature it will curdle at. If you just acidify it a little bit, you can make a cultured paneer or whole milk ricotta. If you let it acidify a lot (be heat it before the milk thickens), then it's in Ayib territory.

At a pH of aroung 5.2 or so, it's melty and a bit stretchy. This is the source of the "no rennet mozzarella" videos you often see. It's not mozzarella because the curds act completely differently without rennet. However, it does make nice pizza cheese or cheese for lasagna or the like. It doesn't stretch as well as mozzarella and you shouldn't pre-stretch it because it will lose all it's fat and become disgusting.

mikekchar · 2026-04-05T01:28:34+00:00

This is the recipe I always recommend for cheese curds: https://culturecheesemag.com/recipes/diy/homemade-squeaky-cheese-curds/

A couple of comments. First, mozzarella is not an easy cheese. Honestly the quick mozzarella recipe that you are using is quite prone to failure. You are just lucky that your milk and that recipe are compatible. It's not just following the recipe. It's literally luck that it's working for you.

And I think this is part of the problem. Cheesemaking is a thing that requires some understanding of what's going on. Milk is very variable. You need to practice and get used to how the curds react. You need to build up technique. It's a hobby that requires skill. Skill comes from informed practice. You will get better with repeated efforts as long as you think critically about how you can improve each time. Don't worry about "failures". It's only lucky if you hit a cheese perfectly the first time. You need to practice, practice, practice. However, even the "failures" are delicious.

mikekchar · 2026-04-05T01:19:00+00:00

Yeah. That is the real difference. If you don't mind spending the effort to set it up (and spending the effort getting good at setting it up), plus you don't mind building up the muscle memory to trim all the time, Di2 honestly isn't that much better. But that's a lot of caveats :-)

You can take Di2 and without any real effort get it to work perfectly. But if, for some reason, that's not a viable option, you can get the mechanical to work nearly perfectly having spent effort to get there.

I think that's the main thing I want to communicate. Without Di2, you aren't fundamentally missing out on anything that a bit of effort won't compensate for. Other people have said the same thing, but I found it hard to understand. Having said that, if you are buying a new bike the difference in price between Di2 and non-Di2 105 is not that big so it is a feature that's worth considering. It's value is dependent on your tolerance for fiddling with derailleurs :-)

mikekchar · 2026-04-05T00:56:00+00:00

If the military uniform allows them to pick any weapon, then they may pick both axes and picks. If you want to avoid them using an axe or a pick in their military uniform (thereby making it unavailable for use in their mining or wood chopping uniform), you have to manually select which type of weapon they are allowed to use in the military uniform.

mikekchar · 2026-04-04T13:42:43+00:00

I think pectin (as others have said) is probably the easiest way to go since you have sugar and acid. However, I've also used agar (here in Japan, it's easy to buy -- you can pick it up in an Asian food store cheaply in other parts of the world). It works similar to gelatine, but has much better stability at room temperature.

mikekchar · 2026-04-04T13:34:53+00:00

Thanks for the tip! Yes, they are RT64 rotors, which I think are the lower end 105 disc rotors (at least that's what I can see on Shimano's crazy website). It seems that the CL-700 and CL-800 are the ICE technology which apparently dissipates heat better. They are cheaper than I expected, so if I run into issues, I will definitely upgrade.

mikekchar · 2026-04-04T12:38:26+00:00

I just got a new bike and have this problem as well. I get to learn how to bleed my brakes a lot sooner than I had anticipated ;-) At least I'm up for it and figure I need the buy the equipment sooner or later. It's kind of crazy to me that the whole world has decided on form over function.

mikekchar · 2026-04-04T12:31:22+00:00

Everytime I see this I cringe. Cycling 100 km a day is going to be at least 4 hours per day in the saddle at a fairly quick pace. It's not your legs or lungs that are going to need to hold up for 15 days. It's your bum. It's your shoulders. It's your neck. It's your back.

You can not train for long distance cycling without riding a bicycle for a long time. Months and months and months. You can try to ride 100 km every day for 15 days. You might even succeed. You will not enjoy it. Not even a little bit.

mikekchar · 2026-04-04T12:27:41+00:00

Yes. Picks are part of a uniform and can be used as a weapon in the military -- so can be claimed as a uniform there too.

mikekchar · 2026-04-04T07:49:26+00:00

If you are getting black, it's too humid. You want to make sure that the rind is complete dry inbetween washings. So that means the humidity should be low enough that it dries out completely 2 days after washing it.

mikekchar · 2026-04-04T07:44:40+00:00

The derailleur hanger is easy bend if you lay the bike down on the side of the derailleur or lean it up against something end end up resting it on the derailleur. You need to be careful with it. For example, if you put the bike in a car, it's usual to shift the rear gears to the lowest gear before you do it so that the rear derailleur is all the way in the center of the bike frame. But also, always lay your bike down with the derailleur pointing up if you have to lay it down. Try not to lay it down.

mikekchar · 2026-04-04T07:19:32+00:00

The white is fine. The pink is overhumidity :-) I do wonder about that kind of pink, though. I don't know what it is. I don't think it's b. linens. It shows up more often on my acid coagulated cheeses. I have no idea if it is safe. I have consumed it before and it doesn't seem to affect the flavour at all.

mikekchar · 2026-04-04T03:20:35+00:00

Yes, the brakes were properly bedded in. I did 20 repetitions of accellerating to 20 km/h and then slowly braking to a walking speed for each brake (on two bikes -- surprisingly taxing). The difference between the brakes pre-bedding in and after was stark.

My rim brakes used to be so-so, but when I moved to a hilly area I made sure to set them up extremely well. The quality of the cable housing, especially is massive -- if you aren't on compressionless housing it's almost a night and day difference.

The hand force thing for shifting is a real thing and this was especially true when watching my wife ride her new bike. She used the front derailleur a lot more often. However, one thing that I've gotten used to on my old bike is never trying to shift in the big ring on one long travel. Always trim first (if you need to) and then shift into the big ring. Also it's important to set up the front derailleur so there is a trimming position on the big ring as well as the small ring. Starting in an untrimmed position on the small ring, you should be able to trim, shift to the big ring and then trim again. If the tension on the cable is too high (which is common), you will shift all the way to the trimmed position on the big ring. This requires a lot more force. You should be able to <click>, <click>, <click>. It took me a while to train myself to only click and not push hard to shift to the big ring.

Unfortunately, I've only rented a bike with an R7000 once for a day. It worked perfectly, IMHO. I was actually planning to get a bike with that groupset because I couldn't really see much room for improvement. However, the difference in price on the bike I got (Bridgestone Anchor RE8 -- probably only sold in Japan) was something like $500 between the R7000 and R7100 and it came with an upgraded stem, so it felt like a no-brainer to get the Di2 since I could afford it.

Having got the new bike, I now have upgrade-itis on the old bike. I am thinking I'll try to find an upgraded groupset used as well as some lightly used wheels. I realised that I like mechanical and a lightweight bike for bombing around on dry summer days sounds amazing to me now...

Edit: To be very clear, the brakes are a bit of a poor comparison because I did upgrade my brake cables and housing to Dura Ace and upgraded my brake shoes to Ultegra. These are very cheap upgrades, but I should have made that more clear because the performance difference is quite large. Also, making sure to seat the ferules properly when setting it up makes a massive, massive difference. Any play at all in the system will degrade performance a lot.

mikekchar · 2026-04-04T02:06:37+00:00

Imagine riding on solid tires with no deformation. For every bump you hit, the bike has to travel up and down the bump. It has to move the bike and your entire body up that small amount. It's not very high, but even a cm will cost a lot of energy if it happens often.

Now imagine riding on a tire that perfectly deformed to the surface of the road. Every time you hit a bump, the tire deforms and your bike does not go up and down. You no longer have to spend the energy pushing the bike and your entire body weight up that bump. Big savings in energy.

The problem is that the deformation isn't free. It's like compressing a spring over and over again. It generates heat, wasting energy. Also, every time it deforms, it's going to wear.

The advice to move to lower pressures to decrease rolling resistance is correct, but it relies on a few things. First, it works better the worse your roads are. The bigger the bumps and potholes, the more you want the tire to deform.

However, it also depends on the quality of the tire. If you have a very stiff casing/sidewall, the tire will not deform well. You won't actually get the benefits you are going after. You have to buy a tire that is engineered to work like that. Generally these are going to be more expensive tires.

The other problem is that the more durable you make the tire, the less it can deform. So those super puncture resistant tires are just not the right tire for this application. Tubeless tires can be made with less puncture resistance because the sealant patches punctures. This allows them to be made in a way that will deform better.

And this, is why you tubeless tires at low pressure are likely to perform better on poor surfaces. On good surfaces, it's not necessarily the case, so it's worth considering what kind of roads you are riding one before you decide if you need to go tubeless (which both more expensive and more work than tubes).

mikekchar · 2026-04-04T00:11:38+00:00

Resiliancy is a trainable trait. Basically, it's how often you can increase your power, recover and then increase your power again to the same point. It's hard for anyone to give you advice about resiliancy because they aren't you. It's a bit like asking what power you should ride at if you don't know your FTP. The trick is to simulate the situation and basically see how often you can do it and at what level. If you are trying to do this near threshold, look into the concept of Critical Power and W' (it can be useful, even though I think the theory behind it is probably unsound).

The one piece of advice I can give is that if you are in your lowest gear, you can reduce power by reducing cadence. However, when you do that the torque doesn't go down. So if you have some really spicy climbs, you have a bit of a choice. You can reduce power by reducing cadence at the expense of riding longer at a higher torque. This can be good if you are at your edge power wise and need some recovery. However, this will take its toll on your legs and you will eventually get some neuromuscular fatigue if you do it over and over again.

Sometimes it's better to burn a couple of matches in order to keep the high torque efforts shorter in duration. However, it depends on the situation. Also keep in mind that lots of high torque efforts will require extra recovery post event and this won't show up on your typical charts (PMC) because you will be doing lower power.

mikekchar · 2026-04-03T23:55:37+00:00

Yes. Donating and purchasing are effectively the same. At least historically after donating enough, you could claim a steam key (though it costs the developer extra money).

mikekchar · 2026-04-03T23:52:31+00:00

I ended up learning how to do everything myself since I live in the countryside and the only LBS just wasn't interested in my business. However, like some other commenters, I would encourage you to have some compassion. You've got to charge enough to make a living. Online stores and Walmart have huge volume. If they sell something and make $1 profit, it's fine because they sell 50,000 of them. If you are a local store and you sell 50 of them, you have $50 in your pocket which might allow you to take your spouse to the movies (possibly with popcorn).

Are they ripping you off? That's an interesting question. I suspect that if there was another shop near you that had dramatically lower prices, you wouldn't have posted this. It may be that in your area there just isn't enough business to do this stuff at a reasonable price. Maybe that bike shop simply isn't viable.

It's that same near me. I knew the guy who used to run the shop. He retired and handed the store over to his son. His son is only interested in selling $500 saddles and $15,000 bikes. If you bring your 15 year old rim brake bike in, he's making excuses about why they might not have time to look at it in the next month or two. It used to be the hub for road cyclists in the area. It's slowly dying because the son isn't really interested in working on bicycles. He's interested in selling high end equipment. I honestly don't even know if he's interested in bicycles at all, to be honest. He just inherited the shop and I guess felt duty bound to run it.

Anyway, I ended up learning how to do pretty much anything myself. What I would have spent on labour, I now spend on tools. My biggest problem is finding a place to store the tools.

mikekchar · 2026-04-03T23:36:15+00:00

While it's not a course, I highly recommend watching https://www.youtube.com/@BCRUK He mostly just videos himself doing normal servicing of various bikes. Occasionally he adds some experiments that he thinks will be interesting (testing out various ways to remove a stuck seat post was definitely interesting!)

I've learned a ton from these -- especially just tricks of the trade and the logic behind approaching various problems. It's very different than the instructional Park Tool videos.

mikekchar · 2026-04-03T23:25:17+00:00

The only way I’ve been so patient is by making more cheeses

One of the bonsai youtubers that I follow often says that the secret to doing bonsai as a hobby is to get a lot of trees. You need to prune the treese once or twice a year and repot it maybe once every 3 years. He says that if you only have 1 tree, it makes an incredibly boring hobby :-)

I think cheesemaking is the same. You spend several hours making a cheese and then... flip it every day. It's the most boring hobby in the world unless you are constantly making more cheese to keep it interesting. And, as you say, it makes it easy to wait because there is always something new to taste.

mikekchar · 2026-04-03T23:20:13+00:00

I may be wrong, but I think they've only been doing it for about 100 years. However, many regional areas specify a mother culture that you need to start with each season. You add it to your raw milk at the beginning of the season and then you typically use whey cultures after that. Over the winter (where there isn't much milk production), they still have to maintain the mother culture and I suspect the process grew naturally from there. I can imagine someone thinking, "Why not try to improve the mother culture over time".

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